After 13 years the annual Doctor Who Christmas special is pretty much a British television tradition. But every so often there’ll come one that stands out from the usual festive fluff, with this time of the year reserved for the current Doctor to bow out and pass the torch onto the next incarnation. Following in the footsteps of 2009’s The End of Time and 2013’s The Time of the Doctor , Twice Upon a Time serves as the swansong for Peter Capaldi’s twelfth Doctor and the debut of Jodie Whittaker in the role, with Steven Moffa t also stepping down as showrunner before Chris Chibnall takes the reins. The episode also sees the return of the very first Doctor – now played by David Bradley on the back of his portrayal of William Hartnell in the excellent 50th anniversary biopic An Adventure in Space and Time .

With the 5" classic Doctor Who line now limited to one or two releases a year, now is the perfect time to start raiding the back catalogue of previous releases. I recently received the Enemies of the First Doctor  set as Christmas gift from the wonderful admin guys at Tokunation , which was perfect as it was a set I've been longing to get since it was released back in 2011. Unfortunately the "Enemies of..." sets never really took off, with only a Third Doctor version being released not long later.Still, this set features some of the iconic villains from the First Doctor's run - a Cyberman , a Roboman and of course, a Dalek . ROBOMAN Moving along these First Doctor enemies in chronological order, our first stop is the set's only brand new figure - a roboman from the 1964 serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth . I use the term "new figure" lightly, as in reality this is in fact a re-purposed Primeval figure with new colouring and some fa...

Truth be told, my interest in Character Option's Doctor Who figure range has been waning of late. Besides their high price point (which seems to only be getting higher), there's been an increasing focus on one off monsters paired with releases or remoulds of existing figures. But among the god-knows-how-many sets they announced over the Christmas period (seriously, there were LOADS) was a set themed on the 1965 first Doctor/Dalek story 'The Chase', including a figure I've wanted to be made since I was five. Alongside two Daleks, the set also included a Mechanoid - the spherical robots that not only battled the Daleks in the final episode of the story, but was also one of their main adversaries in the TV21 Dalek comic strips. Given its size, I was expecting the Mechanoid to be hollow. But nope, its a solid figure and therefore as you can imagine quite heavy. The sculpt is perfect (although the arm did suffer some bending in the packaging) and the colours, while ...